Page 71 of Bear and Order

Marissa's composure finally shatters. It happens visibly, the mask giving way all at once, and the crowd sees it — everybody sees it — and the recognition moves through the square like a current. She turns abruptly and moves to leave, pushing through the edge of the crowd, but she makes it approximately three steps before a sharp yelp cuts through the square and Marissa pitches forward, arms flailing, and crashes into the ground with a force that draws a collective gasp from everyone watching.

The crowd turns. Daisy stands nearby, expression entirely composed, posture entirely innocent. "Oops."

She had set a foot for her to trip on.

The council authorities emerge before Marissa finishes scrambling back to her feet, stepping forward with the ease of people who have been waiting and prepared and ready. The lead officer stops in front of her. "Marissa Holloway." The name falls across the square and the crowd goes still again. "You are under arrest for fraud, evidence tampering, financial manipulation, conspiracy, and obstruction of an official investigation."

The words echo off the storefronts and the fountain and the flower displays lining every street. Marissa goes pale — genuinely pale, the kind that has nothing to do with performance — surprisingly, she has nothing to say. No explanation, no manipulation, no perfectly timed expression. Nothing. The authorities escort her through the parted crowd and she doesn't look back, and everyone watches in the particular silence that follows something they know they'll remember.

Then somebody speaks. "I'm sorry, Juniper."

Another voice follows. Then another. Then another, the apologies beginning to move through the crowd the way the rumors once did, neighbors and customers and friends, people who believed what they heard because it was easier than waiting for the truth, people who walked away when things got difficult, people who stopped coming through my door. I stand there and listen to all of it.

Helena appears on one side of me, Theo on the other, and Daisy somewhere behind, still wearing that expression of complete innocence. The apologies keep coming and I feel almost overwhelmed, not because of the words themselves but because of what they mean — that it's over, actually over, the accusations and the fear and the self-doubt and the loneliness and the mornings of wondering what I had done wrong and whether it was worth continuing.

All of it. Gone.

Brock steps beside me, close enough that his shoulder presses against mine, and the contact steadies me the way it always does. I look around the square — at the people, at the festival, at the flower displays and the music still playing somewhere in the distance as though it never stopped — and I finally let myself breathe.

My name is clear.

After a very long time, when I think about tomorrow, I don't feel dread. I sense something I had almost forgotten how to recognize.

Hope, quiet and certain, settling back into its rightful place.

32

BROCK

3 MONTHS LATER

The orchard is in full bloom when I drop to one knee, and half of Maple Hollow is close enough to see me do it.

Petals drift down around us in slow pink-white spirals, caught in Juniper's hair, scattered across the picnic blankets and the festival banners and the upturned faces of half the town pretending not to watch. Daisy isn't pretending at all — she's already crying into Theo's shoulder, and Theo looks faintly alarmed by the contact but hasn't moved away. Mayor Hawthorne has gone still by the lemonade stand. Even Helena, stationed by the gate with her arms crossed and her usual unreadable expression, has the corner of her mouth tucked up like she already knew this was coming.

Juniper's hand is pressed over her mouth. Her eyes are bright with the kind of tears that don't have anything sad in them at all.

"Brock—"

"I came to this town to inspect a building," I say, and my voice shakes more than I expect it to, more than thirty-five years of disciplined calm has ever allowed. "I found a home instead. I found you instead." I pull the ring from my jacket pocket — simple, gold, set with a small amber stone the same color my eyes turn when I can't hold the bear back anymore, because some part of me wanted her to carry that with her even when I'm not close enough to show her. "Juniper Bell, I don't want eighteen more months anywhere else. I want every spring after this one, right here, with you."

She's nodding before I finish the question, both hands over her mouth now, and when I finally get the words out

Will you marry me?

The sound she makes is something between a laugh and a sob, and she's in my arms before I can stand all the way up.

"Yes." She says it into my neck, into my jaw, against my mouth when I finally kiss her. "Yes, yes, a thousand times yes."

The orchard erupts. Daisy is openly sobbing. Someone — probably Ollie — starts a ridiculous, off-key cheer that the whole crowd picks up, and petals are still falling, and Juniper is laughing and crying at once with my ring on her finger, and I think without any doubt at all. This is it. This is the rest of my life.

It's hours before we're alone. Hours of well-wishes and Mayor Hawthorne making an impromptu speech about new beginnings and Theo already drafting a Gazette headline in his head, I can tell by the look on his face. By the time we finally slip away from the festival and back to the apartment above the bakery — our apartment, I think, with a fierce satisfaction that still catches me off guard sometimes — the moon is high and the whole building smells like vanilla and yeast and home.

Juniper barely gets the door shut behind us before she's on me, her ring catching the lamplight as she fists both hands in my shirt and drags me down to her mouth.

"Mrs. Winn," I murmur against her lips, testing the words, feeling the rightness of them settle into my chest like they've always belonged there.

"Not yet." She's laughing, breathless, already working my shirt buttons loose. "But soon."